The Villain Saint is my secondary account

Undine, in the form of a ball of light, floated in front of Ye Xiao, her voice sounding somewhat forlorn, "...Unfortunately, I no longer have the strength to personally offer you my blessings."

"As you know, my remains and the final tomb of life are imprisoned in the holy city deep in the ocean. When you return to the future, go there... and end it all."

Chapter 112 Back to the Future

(Because of the duplicate text posted yesterday, there will be two updates today, but this is the second update. The first update has already been posted in the second half of the previous chapter. Those who followed yesterday can refresh the previous chapter to see it. (If you have caught up to the latest chapter today, you don't need to refresh the previous chapter. Just continue reading normally.)

P.S.: This new author backend is a total rip-off! None of the new features have been added, and some important information has become even less noticeable.

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Undine gave her instructions in a very hurried manner. Ye Xiao actually had a lot of questions he wanted to ask, but the ball of light formed by the other party's soul was already flickering unnaturally, like a candle in the wind.

The surrounding space also became unstable, and the calm sea was rippled with waves.

Ye Xiao could only quickly put the small ball of light that Undine had entrusted to him into his palm, and then looked at the Dark Shepherd girl lying on the ground covered with snakeskin, "What should we do with this guy?"

"...Because of you...she was also...bewitched..."

Undine's voice became intermittent and increasingly muffled, as if it were coming from a radio with a poor signal.

Will I be sent directly back to the original timeline?

"Um……"

Okay, Ye Xiao scratched his head.

Unfortunately, I couldn't say goodbye to Mingya and Jinli.

Undine's wisp of remnant soul likely escaped from the koi fish when she saw the danger.

After the soul was burned away and saved, it naturally ceased to exist.

He took one last look at his empty right hand, where, as expected, the longsword he had borrowed from Big Tooth Brother had fallen out.

Time really has come full circle. Is everything that happened here truly predestined?

Clinging to his last doubts, Ye Xiao's consciousness was thrown into a dizzying state.

To put it more vividly, he felt like an insect being flushed into a giant toilet, tumbling around in a dark vortex for who knows how long.

Until, a faint light appeared before their eyes...

……

"crash"

Ye Xiao's wet head suddenly emerged from the water, above which was a vast rocky outcrop quietly radiating the light of pyroxene.

Everything before my eyes was so familiar: the underground lake, the shipwreck, the prawns... and that golden retriever cat that was dozing in mid-air with its legs crossed.

He's back... finally.

The experience in Thunder City felt like a distant dream.

Ye Xiao wiped his face, grabbed a driftwood that was floating by, and climbed onto it.

"Oh, you're up here so quickly?"

The kitten Greta, who was dozing in mid-air, saw Ye Xiao, who was soaking wet, and opened her big eyes and rolled over.

"...Long time no see, Miss. It feels like quite a long time has passed."

Ye Xiao smiled, but after several days, seeing Greta's furry face again, she felt a sense of peace for no reason.

He reached out and ruffled the kitten's hair, and the kitten pouted, "Ugh! Your hands are all wet and smelly!"

That's what she said, but Greta's swaying body made it seem like she wanted to avoid it but didn't.

How long was I down there?

Greta smoothed the fur that Ye Xiao had ruffled with her paws, shook her head and thought for a moment, "About half an hour."

As Ye Xiao straddled the wooden board, he noticed out of the corner of his eye that some dark shadows were slowly emerging on the surface of the lake.

Upon closer inspection, he was astonished to discover that it was actually a large group of figures dressed in black robes, rising from the bottom of the lake to the surface like bubbles.

The Dark Shepherd?

Ye Xiao stared blankly at the "floating corpses" covering the lake and whose numbers were still increasing. He then realized that since correcting the spacetime disorder would cause him to be teleported back, the same must be true for other Dark Shepherds who did not belong to that timeline.

So he quickly placed his hand on his forehead and looked around. Soon, he saw the girl he was looking for, who was covered in bandages.

He swam across the water, splashing his arms, and hoisted the unconscious Dark Priestess girl onto his shoulder. A kitten that was floating by nearby saw this and immediately became angry.

"Here we go again! You can't seem to handle this without bringing a few girls home after every incident, can you?!"

"Hey, this is an important informant!"

Ye Xiao had a lot of unspeakable suffering.

Greta flew over like a chubby little elf, circling around Ye Xiao and sniffing him. "And it's not just one woman's scent! One, two, three... Ah!!! How can there be so many?!"

"Alright, alright, sweetie, help me get this girl to the shore."

While carrying the priestess girl through the water, Ye Xiao glanced around at the Dark Shepherds floating on the lake. Most of these guys were still alive.

The battle is over, and killing them would be a waste. After thinking it over, it's better to let Ella take care of this whole group.

Then Greta saw several crows fly down from the sky, taking turns landing on the "floating corpses" on the lake, like dragonflies skimming the water. Each time they landed, they created an invisible ripple that encompassed the "floating corpses" before disappearing.

"Hmph, that woman, she's come here to pick up the pieces now."

Greta crossed her arms over her chest.

“I noticed that you always call her ‘Sister Ella’ when you’re in front of her, but behind her back you’re calling her ‘that woman,’ ‘that woman.’”

Ye Xiao joked as he swam to the shore with the priestess girl.

"Are you an idiot?"

Greta looked at Ye Xiao with disdain. "I call you 'sister' because I'm polite, but what's the point of being so polite when you're not even here?"

Ye Xiao patted the kitten's head with amusement.

"So, what exactly happened to you underwater?"

Seeing Ye Xiao resting against a rock, Greta asked.

Ye Xiao stroked his chin, sorting out the sequence of events, and then began to explain it to Greta.

……

About an hour later, after listening to Ye Xiao's narration, Greta stroked her beard with her fingertips, as if she were thinking.

"Therefore, the change in the sea god belief in Freeport is actually due to this group of Dark Shepherds traveling back in time, seizing the soul of Undine's daughter Encia, and spreading a distorted belief originating from Thunder City in the Southern Continent."

"Yes."

Ye Xiao nodded. "The large red eyeball that the other side summoned at the end is probably the culprit that opened the time-space reversal channel for this group of Dark Shepherds. So I think the Seven Seas City is probably not the only area that the other side is polluting."

"From what you're saying, what appeared there back then was probably just a wisp of that thing's soul used to maintain time reversal."

Greta analyzed, "After the past Encia was possessed, the identity of the past god was equivalent to a legal residence permit, allowing her to protect the followers who traveled to the past with her and remain in the past timeline."

"This conveniently bypasses the repair mechanism of the Fate Thread. I never expected that there would be a way to change history by seizing the identity of a past god."

"But this method is truly bizarre. Based on the few words left by Undine, we can roughly guess that the opening of the space-time channel was achieved by that guy using the power of some kind of authority buried in the Tomb of Life... Even I have never heard of the ability to completely seize the identity of a god."

"How exactly did it do that?"

Chapter 113 A Fish That Escaped the Net

Unfortunately, Ye Xiao couldn't answer this question either.

He couldn't break himself down to study how he became Ella.

However… Ye Xiao glanced at the girl beside him, whose body was wrapped in bandages. This girl had replaced Encia's divine position, so she might know.

Getting this guy to talk will probably be a hassle, and it might require Ella's intervention again.

"It's the Holy Ring..."

But at that moment, a somewhat hesitant voice came from behind. Ye Xiao turned his head and saw that it was a man wearing glasses and a robe of a Dark Shepherd.

He, like the other Dark Shepherds on the shore, had been washed ashore by the lake. He leaned against a rock, but surprisingly, he was conscious.

“I’ve heard them mention it…it might be related to something called the ‘Holy Ring’.”

"You are……?"

Ye Xiao looked the guy up and down; he seemed a little familiar.

"I apologize for not speaking earlier. I am a crew member of Captain Edward, and my name is Wu He."

The other person was soaking wet and panting as he said, "I know you might not remember me. I mainly handle trivial matters like coordinating supplies on the ship. In short, I'm a... um, clerk."

Upon hearing this, Ye Xiao did recall it somewhat.

Ella had seen him at the auction. Besides the towering giant, Captain Edward's entourage included a rather thin man wearing glasses who often carried a notebook.

Ye Xiao looked at the other person's attire with curiosity, "Why do I feel that you are different from the other Dark Shepherds? You seem surprisingly clear-headed? Have you not joined them?"

"They can't brainwash me."

Wu He smiled bitterly, “My other companions, including the captain, had their minds warped by those strange rituals, but I was unaffected… Earlier, I heard something happen outside the castle from the VIP room, and then the back building collapsed. After the chaos, I was suddenly swept back by the lake.”

"That's strange, but why are you unaffected?"

Ye Xiao was surprised. Even the orc city lord of the extraordinary level had been brainwashed into being loyal. This guy looked ordinary, so how come he seemed to be completely fine?

"To be honest, I'm not really sure myself..."

Before he could finish speaking, Greta quietly reminded him, "He doesn't have the threads of fate binding him, just like you."

Ye Xiao was stunned for a moment, then immediately realized what was going on.

"...Are you a player?"

Upon hearing this, Wu He nodded hurriedly, "Oh right, I should be considered one of the otherworldly travelers you're talking about."

"Dude, I'm not a native, I'm a player too."

Ye Xiao waved his hand.

"what……?"

Wu He had been staying in the castle's dungeon and hadn't seen Ye Xiao much, but when the castle collapsed, he was lying in the ruins and witnessed this guy punch a giant snake that spanned the sky, sending it flying. The aftershock of that force alone leveled several streets.

...Is this something a player could actually do??

"What a coincidence, we're from the same hometown."

Ye Xiao grabbed Wu He's bewildered hand and shook it, "Let's talk about the Dark Shepherds you heard about again, shall we?"

Wu He told them everything without reservation; he actually knew quite a lot.

At first, he pretended to be brainwashed and stayed among the followers, not daring to utter a sound.

The Dark Shepherds never expected that there would be someone hiding in the crowd who was completely unaffected by their brainwashing.

Those shepherds were completely unguarded around him during their conversations and actions, to the point that he had even been promoted to be in charge of the security of the "prince" that Shen San kept talking about.

"That Prince Shen from the Eastern Continent is just... well, a little brat."

Wu He awkwardly scratched his cheek. "It's called security work, but it's actually more like being a nanny. It's just taking care of that guy's daily life."

"But thanks to this, in the room where the child prince was being held captive, the Dark Priest had a few conversations with a girl in a purple robe."

"The Full Moon Priestess?"

Ye Xiao thought of that strangely behaving girl.

In fact, the Moon God Spider inside him was created thanks to that guy, but it became a key tool for breaking the Encia Kingdom.

That guy was supposed to be a representative of the company and cooperating with the Dark Shepherds, but he deliberately left a spider for Ye Xiao. Was he trying to trip him up?

Ye Xiao pondered the relationship between the company and the Dark Shepherds. The former was a new force that was digging up tombs of life everywhere, while the latter was an old force that may have already controlled several tombs of life a long time ago. There might indeed be a conflict of interest between them.

"At the time, the priest was talking to the prince in the room. It seemed that she wanted the prince to write a decree ordering his men to search for a certain 'follower of a false god.' Well, that was her exact wording. I don't know exactly what this 'follower of a false god' meant."

"It's okay... I know that."

"Then, the girl in purple robes came to visit the room and asked the priest if she could borrow the power of the 'Holy Ring'. 'Since your godhood ceremony is already completed, please ask our lord to give us a spot to help out, since my moon goddess is already dead,' that's what she said."